How this Mom Feeds Us: 5,000 Sq/Ft of Gardens (TOUR)

This is my absolute favorite flower in the entire world. It is a lemon gem. Rub your hand over it, it smells so good. I'm going to give you all a tour of my gardens. This is basically a volunteer sunflower garden. I do plant other plants in here. We've got cosmos, got an out of control lemon balm. I want this garden to be a perennial garden. I want it to just come back and I don't have to come do a whole lot to it. This mainly is stuff that just came back on its own. We did plant some sunflowers over in this area. Here's my oregano, it's kind of getting big and crazy. Here's the echinacea that I planted several years ago and it is doing beautiful. I've got some dahlias in here as well, just some volunteer sunflowers, a couple of zinnias that I planted. We also have— it looks like a pumpkin maybe growing. Onto my raised bed garden. I'll admit this year I haven't been as enthusiastic or excited. I think it's mainly because I've been battling the cats. I've planted numerous, numerous plants, small seedling stage, and they have literally just scratched it up. We've got our lettuce, heat tolerant variety. This is a volunteer sunflower in here. I planted some nasturtiums, some holy basil, which is just— smells— one thing I just love, love about this. I do want to dry some of it for tincturing. Here we have peppers. We have lunchbox peppers. I did lose one of my plants, I see, to the cats. Meow! I planted green beans and something else. The cats took that out, so that's frustrating. And then I have one sunflower in which I had planted a ton of sunflowers in the middle, and I had also planted some other Lemon Gems that also got scratched out. Meow! This bed, I planted a zucchini in the corner, so that is where I'm at with this bed. Basically, I've got volunteer sunflowers, a tomatillo— a tomatillo— a tomatillo. Y'all will make sure I know that I said that wrong. That's a volunteer, and all these other sunflowers that are so gorgeous are also volunteers. In this next bed, I've got some old peas that I probably should pull out. Zinnia is growing. I got two different varieties of parsley. I do have a couple cilantro on this side. I've got bunching onions that I need to pick. Got more of my very favorite marigold. Yellow squash that is doing so good, and I have pruned it up. I need to do some more pruning on it. It's actually vined up and over, and now I guess we're gonna go down. More zinnias. I've got actually some jalapeños that I need to pick in this one. More yellow squash in which I need to get on pruning it. It also came up and over. But I have to say that the pruning has worked really, really, really, really, really well— way beyond how great I thought it did or would do. It just seems to like really be allowing the airflow, which is great. Over here I've got 2 zucchinis in this bed, 2 Sungolds, a German Johnson. Unfortunately, it looks like I'm battling the chickens on the tomatoes. Tomatillos over here. Matios. I think that's how you say it. I can't ever remember. I've got two of them that are exploding. I mean, they're just exploding. I believe I have two peppers that are barely growing because they're being shaded out by everything else. My other zucchini that I need to debug. I have, uh, shishito peppers. I am really, really, really enjoying these. I have come up with like a cream cheese bacon filling that goes inside. Oh my word. And you kind of put them under the broiler and let everything just heat up, and they are so, so good. I'm super excited about this zucchini in particular. I actually think I saved it from a vine borer. I was pruning it and I noticed that there was kind of like this worm that was like trying to bore into it, so I quickly got it out and I don't think it had done too much damage at that point. So that's exciting, and it's seems to be doing just fine. Put some worm castings on the bottom of the plant and just really watered it well just to kind of give it a boost. In this bed I have dill. I'm trying so desperately to grow a ton of dill this year. Um, I have had many snafus with it, with the cats, with it not germinating, with it just not really growing. I'm not sure what is happening this year. I have one dill plant that is doing very well, thank goodness. Looks like I might have another one that is coming on. I've got sage, thyme, tarragon, basil, some sunflowers that the cats didn't destroy, and some cucumbers growing on the trellis. This cucumber variety is called Homemade. Is that Homemade? Yes, I believe it's Homemade. And I like it the best for pickling. I've grown so many different varieties of the pickling one, and that is definitely my favorite. I feel like I've had a hard time this year with cucumbers, but I may be coming out of it now. This last bed, I've just got cucumbers. I'm hoping to get a great enough harvest that we can actually ferment a bunch of pickles. These seem to be doing really well right here, and I've got these, and hopefully my dill will take. That is the kitchen garden. Now on to the crop gardens. This garden in particular, we've got nut squash, acorn squash, and I think some spaghetti squash. Everything seems to be going really well. I love these gardens because we don't really have to weed in them. They just kind of do their thing. Oh, it looks like we also might have some pumpkins as well. In these 5 rows, we just plant— replanted potatoes. The plan is to come in here and flame weed, and then we will hill the potatoes as they come up. Where we grew garlic last year, and we have a volunteer squash plant. And over here is our sweet potatoes. We just weeded in there. It looks like it's doing really good. Coming into my high tunnel, we have worked a ton in here in the last week or so. It had gotten really out of control. I mentioned that we traveled a lot in June, and because of that, this got very, very neglected. I have spent a lot of mornings in here getting it back to where it needed to be, and it's just so nice coming in here. Over here we've got green beans, and we have got a ton of green beans coming on. I hope to preserve some via freezing. When I was at the store the other day, I picked up several FoodSaver bags. I do blanch— I do like blanching. I am prepared. I've been doing a lot of bean preserving though via fermentation. I really like the book Traditionally Fermented Foods. It has a great green bean recipe in it. And then I actually take their pickle recipe and I make dilly beans with them. They're so good. Down here at the bottom, I planted 4 cucumbers. Hopefully they're going to make it. I had planted some other cucumbers that were there that did not make it. In here we planted some watermelon, which we actually ate one out of there, but the weeds took over. And that was no good. And then we've got our tomato plants. All in the middle is the centerpiece of my garden, which is my tomato plants. I have many different varieties in here. I've got cherry, got this variety that I'm— I don't, I can't remember which one it is, but it is gorgeous. It is, um, like yellow, but it tinges red. Like, look at this. Like, look at how gorgeous this is. I've been just kind of using them like a paste tomato. I don't I think they are a paste tomato, but that's what I've been using them like. These fun ones— I think this tomato plant is dying, but here, here's its counterpart that is living. We've got some yellow tomatoes as well. They're so delicious. I haven't ever really, um, grown yellow tomatoes in the past, but this year, um, it's changing my mind. I'm like, I have planted another row of cucumbers. My previous row died. I don't know what happened. Got my pepper row. Um, I've got yellow and red varieties this year, and they are turning out gorgeous. So there's my green pepper. Oh, look at this one. This one might be ready. Look at that, gorgeous. That concludes my summer garden tour. I got a little bit of harvest. Out to share with friends, make some salsa, and I also harvested some green beans that are already in the house. So thanks for watching!